(though I wish there was a more tangible way of understanding what goes into gaining the points in battle for skill learning),

uhh. Grades.

Berseria is good. But boring. Too railroading (even worse than linear), locking mechanics and features behind story progression/optional bosses as if players can't be trusted to not break the game, dumb weakness mechanic idea (why would it be harder to trigger weakness combo against enemy with 7 weaknesses compared to enemy with 1 weakness and 4 resistances for example?), filthier RNG than Zestiria to get equipment with desired Random Skills...and many more really.

Berseria dropped to below Top 5 for me after playing it in English (well, 6th place actually, so it's still pretty good). It's still fun, but after playing it twice (first time in Japanese), I can judge it better this time around and not clouded by excitement.

That's interesting, I actually found the RNG MUCH better in Berseria, the way they handle skills is soooo much less annoying, you get to learn them permanently, and the random ones are like added bonus, I really love this enhancing system, its SO MUCH less tedious for me personally.

I agree about the railroading, I don't think its worse than linear, but for sure it was one of its flaws I found with it, along with the means of transportation, I used to be a fan of point and click, but not so much anymore. I don't really like the Inoph bottles either, I like a story reason for the ability to go from place to place. But better than the save point travel at the very least from Zestiria and the inexplicable fast travel in the Xillias.

I don't mind the potentites, some I agree kinda silly to have those locked behind story progression, the rest were just fun little bonuses that seemed appropriate enough to me.

Well, you must have never gotten a cast time reduction skills on Rokurou's dagger or Velvet's sword. Or a bangle with three "-1 BG Mystic Arte usage while invulnerable" (for context, the Skill don't stack).

And what do you do if you have an equipment with one really good Random Skill (say Attack+40) but two shit Random Skills, and you have another equipment with two Attack x1.15s? Nothing, because you can do nothing about it. Good RNG? Nope. At least Zestiria has tons of way to skew the RNG to your favor and equipment fusion to pass on skills you want to one equipment.

Sure, Zest equipment system might be overbloated and complicated, but instead of building/improving it around with better UI/UX (because by god, the Skill Board system is perfect and most innovative thing they've ever made in recent years), they bailed and made a shitty (with no substance) equipment system for Berseria. And they even feel the need to lock the upgrade system because players can't be trusted to not break the game hahaha.

Or maybe, they just thought "come to think of it, just collecting stuff and upgrading to +10 is really shallow, right? It can be done in like, 5 minutes, top....I know, let's lock the upgrade system and scatter the keys to late game bosses. That'll slow down the player and make them think that our equipment upgrade system is really profound."

This is probably a nitpick to most, but I really don't understand why a game which was released 5 years prior, as an escort, fanservice game, can have an objectively better equipment crafting system than two AAA mothership games. I'm talking Radiant Mythology 3, because oh god that game knows how to make equipment system right.

Manually transferable skills is not rocket science nor does it require intense resources/database. A freaking PSP game can have it. But nope, has to casul it to hell because clearly everyone hates complex games. Let's dumb everything down. And let's make sure we hold the player's hand all the way. Oh and let's make the main character immortal and has all elements. What? Ludger already did it and everyone hates him for the exact same reason? Well, don't worry about it. Velvet is different.

- Skits and conversations with townspeople are too long (and too many at once).

This. I didn't have many issues with the game but this was one of them. You finish like a half hour long series of cutscenes and then just when you're about to go into more gameplay: BAM. 5 more skits all at once!

- Skits and conversations with townspeople are too long (and too many at once).

This. I didn't have many issues with the game but this was one of them. You finish like a half hour long series of cutscenes and then just when you're about to go into more gameplay: BAM. 5 more skits all at once!

Honestly, I feel like I've been having this issue with the skits in the last few titles starting with Xillia.

Sure, I understand that when long cutscenes happen, there's more for characters to react to and it makes more sense for them to respond right after it happens. But it makes the pacing feel off where I can go into a sequence of coming out of one skit to immediately be tossed into the next, yet I'll be out grinding for an hour or so and not get a single skit.

This is a big problem with Japanese game design right now. You have games like Dragon's Dogma or God Eater where there's a lot of repeat dialogue during gameplay (God Eater at least has a LOT of variety due to its large cast and number of unique lines for each Create-a-Character voice,) but then you have character-focused skits in games like Tales and God Eater that only play outside of gameplay. It would be nice if more of these character interactions happened on the field while characters are wandering around, kinda like FFXV, rather than in predesigned circumstances.

At least recent Tales games have had a skit shop where you can just buy ones you missed. That's a massive improvement already.

_________________Dr Pepper. It's an intellectual drink, for the chosen ones.

That reminds me of another issue I had with the game. In all Tales games with conversations at the start of some special battles or boss fights I've always sort of hung back and let the dialogue fully play out, because there had been times before where I had actually finished the battle before the conversation was finished.

In Berseria, even if I did that, there was a high chance one of the computer controlled characters would activate a mystic arte which would cut the entire conversation short! That annoyed the crap out of me every time it happened.

I'm kind of surprised at this point, that Japanese games haven't figured out to restart dialogue when Western games have been doing that. It just doesn't seem like something that should be too difficult to figure out.

My first playthrough, I went with English (because that's how I roll). On my 2nd playthrough, I switched to Japanese to "see" how it is.

Here's my impression:

-Japanese Phi doesn't sound like a boy. He sounds like an older woman. Velvet doesn't sound really angry. Magilou is awesome. Eizen doesn't have a "deep" voice. It's a bit too light for his character, IMO. No opinion for that crazed samurai. Eleanor was alright. I haven't had a chance to hear the main villains in action yet.

I gotta agree with the way skits piled up, I wish they were more spread out in the environment and not piled after major story checkpoints. I really like Taiyz's idea to resolve this. I didn't mind any lengths though, I never felt like a conversation went on too long in skits, though some townspeople I felt like if they were going to go that long the format should be different, I wouldn't expect to be there that long when I first click.

I never used the JP voices either, but I do hear the comparison is pretty good, the only one I've heard any complaints for is Laphicet in that one major scene. (But I have no comparison myself, I think its really amazing in English)

I got dinged with the missing beginning of battle dialogue so often :/ I always forgot to empty out people's BG's beforehand. I looked up youtube playthroughs specifically to hear it played out for a lot of them.

@King Cat: I hear you, I think I just came in with different expectations, what I like is the ability to learn skills, I never viewed the random skills as anything other than random, that could maybe help, but not what the system is built around. I don't find many of the bonuses to be much help other than the BG/SG ones anyways, but I have yet to start the EX Dungeon, I beat the game, then left that off for the summer. RM3 definitely had a great system! I never took advantage of it because crafting is too tedious for me (mostly, it depends, I did it in Berseria and I did it in Dragon Age: Inquisition)

I did finish the game, it was absolutely phenomenal, I could not get enough of it! I haven't been this excited while playing an RPG in a LONG time. Its got me excited for whatever Namco is cooking up next. The whole cast left an impact on me, its finally a "latest in the series" game I feel safe introducing people to the series with.

Hence why I said this game has filthier RNG than Zestiria. It doesn't have better RNG than Zestiria AT ALL.

And I really hate how the game lock you out of good bonuses for 90% of the game; tier 4 Random Skill is only unlocked after Theodora, and well, you can't get Sovereign Acerite (for the only way to get more Cast Time Reduction skill) without unlocking equipment upgrade to +10, which is cameo battle, or 2nd hardest superboss.

I mean, who in their right mind would lock a key feature behind a fucking superboss? Why do you even need that upgrade if you can defeat them without it? You should get everything before a superboss fight, so you can set up your strategy and use your everything to tackle the superboss.

Compare it with Zestiria that laid bare everything right from the start; you can fuse any amount of equipment (to +99) if you so like; you have a chance to get all of the Skill if you're lucky and farm, but allow you to skew the RNG to your favor with Normins; and you can manipulate the outcome of your equipment by fusing sealed Skills instead of just praying to god that your next drop is not shitty.

The RNG is bad I agree with that, but I hate RNG in general, that's why I like Berseria better, I don't need to deal with it because it's not that significant, and the actual weapon skill system is good. I totally agree though, based on what it's supposed to be it's not good, Zestiria is better in that regard, I just found it way too tedious to actually take advantage of, I'm only for hard work that makes sense to me LOL

I actually found that superboss pretty easy, don't mind it was locked there because still plenty to do with the maxed equipment, namely everything post-game, because he was pre-post-postgame. I beat him in my end game round up and used maxed equipment in the final dungeon and boss battle. I usually agree best equipment is useless as a reward if there's nothing to fight, but here there's still stuff to do, so I didn't mind that. I do think it's odd to have it locked at all, I agree there, probably because there's no ultimate weapons to be found in chests really, it's all fusable, nothing unique can really happen, so had to put ultimate skills at the end somehow, could just reward players for grinding early too though.

What I really want is a blue sephira in this game, fusing to 10 is expensive :/

I finished Berseria not that long ago and I really loved it (I finished the main story and began the EX Dungeon). I loved the story, the characters (both protagonists and antagonists) as well as the battle system a lot. At first I was afraid of messing up during battle because the button mapping was different from all previous Tales games, but since I played the demo enough, I was already used to it when I started the game.

I do agree with King Cat about RNG, but I don't mind that much because I like the skills system much more than Zestiria's.

On a basic level I actually liked Zestiria's skill system way better. It was perfectly acceptable to ignore the skill sheet if you didn't want to bother, but it did make a huge difference if you did spend the time and effort to optimize that. On a more basic level, I absolutely loved the way equipment skills worked, because you could absolutely get all (but one, unless you wanted that particular equip's default skill) the skills you wanted on each piece of equipment. I don't know if any of you have have played Shin Megami Tensei Nocturne as well as Persona 3/4, but in Nocturne when fusing demons there was the possibility of getting the exact combination of skills you wanted. Not so in Persona 3/4, which was way more limiting in what skills your Personas could get.

I don't like limits, to be honest. What I like is the ability to get exactly what I want, even if it takes me extra thought and time. And to be honest, learning the skills for Berseria's later equipment was a massive hassle because of the amount of grade it took. I mean, I love Berseria, but... that is not the kind of grinding I want to put up with. It is just mindless compared to Zestiria in my opinion. :/ No offense intended, since obviously everyone's got different preference.

... also, I absolutely loved that you could carry over your equipment between playthroughs in Zestiria. I never really felt invested in upgrading equipment a ton in Graces or Berseria because there was no way to get them back after you beat the game.